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samedi 30 mai 2015

Five years after the best-seller (well^^...) Roswell: Encounter with the first Myth, Gilles Fernandez is back...

You will never look at the sky in the same way...

Nor you will approach the UFO and anomalistic literature as before...

In the thema "the book you are the Hero", you'll have to become an investigator and you will be challenged to solve uncredible stories, photographs and videos. Ready to accomplish it and to become a so-called ufologist?

You will visit the past, and be back to the time of the cowboys, in the last decades of the 19th Century (French translation and enhanced version of my study of the 1896/97 Airships Wave) ...

You will explore how we are all different, interindividualy or during our own life (intra-individualy).

You will learn intellectual self-defense...

"Flying Saucers and Phantom Airships": THE book of 2015 Summer or Fall 2015.

But in French!

A book version first, and FREE in open source 3 years after, "as usual".

Hell has probably frozen over, because for once I agree with Gilles. The body is shorter than 3-1/2'-4' by my own estimates, including comparison with the stocky woman standing to the right whose legs and pelvis are mostly showing (perhaps the middle-aged and stocky Hilda Blair).

Comparison with the woman suggests the body is at most waist high standing up, or 3'-3-1/2'. (Again depends on a lot of partial unknowns, such as how tall the woman really is, exact body proportions, where woman's and body's feet are, etc.)

A more accurate measure is the vertical metal support with holes in it. Such holes are typically 1" apart (I've been looking at contemporary ones) and can be used as a ruler. Using that, I get about 35" high [89cm]

Now if the holes were really 1-1/4" or 1-1/2" inches apart, then you have to scale accordingly, and the body would be ~44"-57". Clearly the top figure of 57" is much too large compared to the woman, while the 44" figure might be barely possible, but I doubt it.

I suspect the 1" separation is likely to hold up, and we have a body about 3' high [91 cm] , give or take a few inches, not 3-1/2'-4' or more. This is also more self-consistent when comparing with the woman than the other estimates with larger hole spacing.

samedi 9 mai 2015

The Epilogue

Slide credit: Frank Hadl & "Frances"

Slide credit: Frank Hadl & "Frances". Idem, with the mount, annotated 12 December 1956 and being a mummy...

Isaac koi comment: Frank Hadl took a photo of that "alien"/mummy in December 1956 when he was in the Air Force - and annotated it as being a "mummy, at Montezuma Castle" and recorded the date of his photo as well ("12/56"). Label your slides people...

Following up on Anthony Bragalia's post mentioned above giving a link to a Picasa web album, I contacted the owner of that web album today. Her husband (Frank Hadl) emailed promptly emailed me and confirmed that he took the relevant photo in December 1956.

In our previous articles (first, second,third + 4thones) we have seen the so-called Roswell slides are images that a group of UFO promoters – including Anthony Bragalia, Jaime Maussan, Adam Dew, Donald Schmitt, Tom Carey, and Richard Dolan – put forward at an event held on May 5, 2015, in Mexico City, as proof positive of an extraterrestrial crash at Roswell in 1947 and the recovery and cover-up by the US government of alien bodies. These are claims that most of the aforementioned group have been making for over two years now. They have repeatedly said that the best experts they could find were examining the slides, and that they had determined the slides were of unearthly origin.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As many skeptics have been saying since the first rough image of one of the slides was procured several months ago as a screen capture from a promotional video released by Dew, the figure photographed and shown in the slides is almost certainly a mummified body.

We can now remove the word “almost” from the aforementioned sentence. The key to solving the mystery was in the placard seen in the slides in front of the body, a placard that the slides promoters assured everyone could not be deciphered despite extensive examination. Here is what Don Schmitt said on April 12, 2015:

This will be part of the event, part of the program in May, that all of these analytical reports, all of the analyses, all of the main experts as well as the photographic experts who examined- there’s a placard, very fuzzy, that can not be legibly read by the naked eye, yet we’ve had everyone from Dr. David Rudiak, to Studio MacBeth, even the Photo Interpretation Department of the Pentagon, as well as Adobe have all told us that it’s beyond the pale, that it cannot be read, it is totally up to interpretation.So, we truly feel we have performed due diligence; we have done everything we can to substantiate and prove what is contained within these slides, whether it is something of a human malady or something truly extraordinary.

Tom Carey was interviewed about the Roswell Slides on the March 22, 2015 episode of Jaime Maussan’s Contacto on Tercer Milenio TV. Carey said that experts have been able to read some words on the placard on the case and that, “debunkers will be disappointed.”

During May the 5th conference, it was announced their team unable to decipher the placard, despite Carey previous announce against "skeptics"...

It took us just a few hours to prove otherwise, once we received a high resolution copy of one of the slides (note: while our copy came from an inside source within the promoters’ group, slides promoter Adam Dew has now released it as well).

By using the commercially available SmartDeblur, a member of our group (Nab Lator), was able to significantly clear up the blurred text. Other members of the group helped narrow down the actual words.The first line was the most clearly resolved:

MUMMIFIED BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY

There is no reasonable doubt that this is the true and correct text.

The other three lines of the text are more difficult to decipher, but seem to say something like:

The entire effort only took hours, quite a difference from the “years” of research claimed by the slides promoters. The fact that the promoters did not release proper high resolution scans of the slides made our work more difficult, but in the end it was still relatively easy to decipher the key parts of the image.

The mystery of the placard is solved, and so is the nature of the body.

It was a boy, from Earth.

The question that remains is whether or not the Slides promoters have been deliberately deceiving the public in order to profit financially, or whether they were simply incompetent. Perhaps it was a mixture of both. Either way, their credibility as investigators and researchers has been destroyed.

French investigator Flo78 provided us a photograph of some preserved samples of those sandals made of Yucca fibre (Mesa Verde N. P. Museum, Colorado).

A capture from the book The land of the cliff-dwellers (1892) by Frederick H. Chapin, p.169.

Illustration by Nippa Downey. What the Roswell Slides promoters projected and believed as an army blanket (see our previous entries) and as we guessed, was small cotton blankets so typical for mummies...

Hear this interview of Donald Schmitt (and Richard Dolan) before the show of May the 5th, and compare to what we know few hours or days after :

And an ironic wink to investigator Tony Bragalia, one the mummies exhumed in Mesa Verde vicinity was nicknamed by the scientifics... "Tony".

On a side note: It was a team effort and more, by team including anomalists, skeptics, amateurs from several fields not really concerned by "UFO" and people not totally sharing the same opinions about the UFO phenomenon, but able to share all and work together. A sort of real DreamTeam, then?!

jeudi 7 mai 2015

Claims in Media the Two days before the Conference by the Participants: Shyness, Speech Adjustments & Disappointment?

R. Dolan in His Facebook page posted this photograph with the following comment:

On my way to Mexico City to be present at the unveiling of the so-called Roswell slides. I have not seen the slides, nor offered a public position on their authenticity, but there has been some interesting analysis done already on them, which I have discussed with a few of the principal researchers involved. While there has been some hype promoting the slides, there has been much more hype and invective in the attempt to discredit them. I find it fascinating, since none of the critics have seen the slides.

Richard Dolan claimed after seeing the slides two days before the Conference (or good screen copies of the slides):

I have been in Mexico City for the past day, meeting with Jaime Maussan, Tom Carey, and Adam Dew. Don Schmitt will arrive soon. I was able to see directly the two so-called Roswell slides. In addition, I became further acquainted with several fairly detailed analyses of them by technically proficient professionals. All of this has made me glad that I have decided to participate in the event this coming Tuesday. My opinion is that these slides are compelling. There will always be the possibility or glimmer of uncertainty about them, no question about it. But when you put the entire story together about these slides, and when everyone has the opportunity to look at them and examine them in detail after Tuesday, my feeling is that they will not easily be debunked. Not legitimately, anyway. My feeling at this point is that these slides will be here to stay.

Did it really sound like an "admission of weakness"? Yes, the conference should focus (and was advertised or teased as such for months) on the slides as a scientific evidence to prove the existence of aliens having visited our planet (probably from a crash at Roswell).
Reading R. Dolan describing the slides (as after some exchanges with the participants), the only evidence in fact would come from the Story around the slides, and not by the slides themselves. The problem will be to examine if the story around the slides is compelling, and not projective elaborations of some sort, ie such researchers who had projected their own UFOlogical and crashologist belief and expectation from the other photographs, some investigations they made about the Ray family, and mainly from the inside cultural background they are the main mythtellers and packmen(don’t understand your meaning for this word), to concoct a story confirming such belief and expectation (a sort of circular reasoning).

Don Schmitt:

Can we prove it’s an alien? Well, a picture unfortunately can’t do that. We don’t have the DNA, we don’t have a tissue sample. We can’t do that. But, for those who are open-minded, objective in their reasoning as to if they can accept that we are not alone, that we are being visited, there had to have been pictures taken, there had to have been people who were availed an opportunity to see what was recovered, and possibly at Roswell in 1947. And we’re not going to be the group of individuals who always live by the model anything but extraterrestrial, anything but ET.

In our previous article, I stated: "I" must point that there is no scientific way or method to prove from a simple slide that an "artificial artifact" is "alien" (isotopic analysis must be done, for example), same regarding a biological being (DNA analysis must be done for example). And this whatever "forensic ufology" will claim or academical. You need the physical sample."
I'm glad to see that Mister Schmitt has "awakened" or is at least more careful (here).

Jaime Maussan:

Scientific analysis of the photographs, by researchers and physical anthropologists from Mexico and Canada, it was determined that being is not a mammal, a mummy or child, is probably foreign to the earth, which has very similar characteristics reptiles.

Again, any academic or ufologist claiming foreign to Earth or Alien from only a single photograph for something looking as a biological being (same if looking as an artificial artifact) is only speculating or worst, imagining: there exists no scientific methodology able to drive to such a scientific evidence or conclusion from a slide. In the same way, a close friend "admitted" to us:

I've taken advance courses in anatomy and physiology over the years and I can't distinguish whether the images depict something biological or a prop manufactured.

And if she or he have an "ufological background", the specialist is not the "neutral" and "agnostic" one we are expecting for a "conclusion" of such a magnitude: his cultural backgroung can biase him.

But, in the past (see my previous article) when such UFO cases where an "alien being" was claimed and when or if the case is reaching mainstreams and going out the strict ufological microcosm, some real agnostics (I mean with no ufological backgrounds, interest, hobby) are consulted by journalists. I hope it will be the case here, in the sense it will be not the own "Roswell slides promoters" who will have selected the "specialists" giving feed-back, opinions, "analysis" and so on (and possible cherry-picking).

An extraordinary claim requires more than ordinary proof facing a likely or very likely ordinary explanation: extraordinary explanation requires solid evidence. An extraordinary explanation must present higher level of guarantees against the risk of higher error. Indeed, if an extraordinary explanation is proposed, it must be accompanied by evidence and sitting securely over ordinary explanations, to make it plausible. From an epistemological point of view, the requirement of proof is not the same when a claim calls into question all the scientific consensus: go against this consensus, validated by experiments, therefore asks to present scientific or solid proofs.

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For a long time and for those who have followed this Saga, Tom Carey, Don Schmitt and Anthony Bragalia argued that they had the support of several scientists to ensure that the slide depicts a "Roswell alien being" or something not from Earth, nor a mummy, a dummy... However, they never offered any documents to prove their claims and we must had to wait the conference. A few days before the public presentation of the images, we were able to know the identities of some the experts as we will see. But Jaime Maussan confessed that the first was added at the last minute, and the second, the Canadian expert, is/should be a former classmate of ufologist Tom Carey in the University of Toronto* (then, again not the neutral experts with no links with the Roswell "mythtellers" we are expecting for a "discovery" of this magnitude)...

So, in the two days before the conference, several names of "independent" specialists circulated in the media. Jaime Maussan stated:

Luis Antonio de Alba, anatomist and physiologist at the UNAM [Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México] although it does on behalf of the Máxima Casa de Estudios, a man well qualified. We all put our careers at risk, is an unprecedented investigation.

A second name circulating was the one of a Canadian (physical?) anthropologist, Richard Doble. At this stage, we found that the first specialist published something about hormones and menopause, and the second maybe an article circa 1976/1980 titled A study of Variation in African Populations. Following our indirect sources (but individuals in Mexico City), and for a second he is mentioned (see after) R. Doble claimed:

It's nothing like us, we can see that his feet, his legs appear to be a reptile could have evolved from something like a gecko, not theirs because geckos are of the earth, but some similar animal became larger and developing a large brain, turned binocular vision, he decreased his nose, his mouth turns out to be different from ours, but there are parts that could have been removed at autopsy seem to have no teeth but an inner structure guess some kind of bone, would have that eat, we have no proof of something like that ...

Wow, an evolved gecko! If this quote is real, I'm a little astonished that a specialist is able to deduce from the size of a head the size of the brain and this, from a single slide (you need dissection, MRI, etc. for this)... Binocular vision only means that an animal is using their two eyes together. Some animals (mainly predatory animals) then have their two eyes positioned on the front of their heads, thereby allowing for binocular vision and able of stereopsis. Humans, but eagles, wolves, and snakes (and snakes are reptiles) have binocular vision.

An old article where R. Doble is mentioned.

Anoter name of such "experts" came monday the 4th, Ricardo Rangel Martinez (a biologist but "well immersed" in the UFO Culture). Concerning his "immersion" in the UFO culture, read for example the following on-line "article" and presented on TV by... Jaime Maussan: Sky worm over Mexico. Again, I have nothing against UFO "sighters", only pointing he is not the agnostic, not linked with the Roswell slides promoters and neutral we are expecting here for an "expertise".

In a second and longer part (here or in another post or in a collective Roswell Slides Group article), and because I spent the dollars to watch the show, I will focus on the conference itself, examine strange claims of the participants, how they had "lied" regarding previous claims and what they teased and announced about the famous slide(s) themselves.
The only thing I can say to you is that the title of the conference "BeWitness" was a very good choice: I assisted and was then the witness of the last episode of a contemporary myth called Roswell. For this, I don’t regret the expense!

Qui êtes-vous ?

Gilles Fernandez is a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from LIMSI/CNRS (Université de Paris-Sud) and René Descartes University (Paris, France). His interrests for 1993 to 2006 as research scientist focused on the relationships between linguistic and visio-spatial representations, between creativity and human intelligence, on psychometry and child giftedness, Bayesian statistical methods for assessing importance of effects. He is actualy independant writer and lecturer in the domain of "why people believe weird things" (such as pseudosciences, UFO, superstitions, modern myths, urban legends, etc.).